Short back and sides, a beard trim and a thorough ear cleaning: there is little Hanoi's streetside barbers won't do. In the city where increasing numbers of Western salons cater to dapper urbanites with cash to spend, the city's old-school sidewalk coiffeurs still do a brisk trade thanks to loyal customers and $1.30 haircuts.
Across Hanoi, day or night, legions of entrepreneurial barbers like Nguyen Van Tu are hard at work snipping and shaving, often with little more than a few grooming tools and a small mirror “- in Tu's case, hung up on a single rusty hook.
Tu used to work in a factory but switched professions a decade ago.
He relishes being his own boss and has even made a few friends along the way, like German designer Tobias Kuester-Campioni, a dedicated client since 2014.
Kuester-Campioni turns up at Tu's stall every 10 days, often bringing him new blades to add to his stockpile.
"It's a local tradition here in Hanoi, you see so many barbers on the street and I guess everybody has his own one and I found mine," he said, after being shorn clean with a fresh blade as motorbikes whizzed past.
By some accounts, the tradition of cutting hair on Hanoi's sidewalks dates back generations, and today a haircut costs about $1.30, with a bit extra for an ear clean, still affordable to most people in Vietnam where the average annual income is around $2,100.
The barbers have proven to have staying power, even as the formal hair care industry grows, with sales in the sector nearly doubling in value between 2010 and 2015 to $220 million, according to Euromonitor International.
But the sidewalk barbers are so engrained that many prefer them to increasingly common Western-style salons which charge as much as $40 for a cut in the fast-developing communist capital of Vietnam where the middle class is burgeoning. AFP
